Fall is the time when honey bees run up against nectar dearth. This is when the ready supply of nectar and pollen from blooming flowers trees and shrubs diminish and the bees are forced to rely on their stored honey.

This year, as we wrote about in a previous post, We rescued a late-season swarm and installed them in an empty hive. We knew that starting this colony on bare frames so late in the season presented a risk that they would not survive the winter because they did not have the stored honey to live off of. For this reason, and to help them boost their storage of honey, we began to feed them one to one sugar to water syrup and discovered that they were going through a full mason jar twice a day. When we inspected the hive just 10 days after rescuing it, we were amazed by how much come and honey the bees had already built up in the hive. Sugar water was proving to be a great support.

We read that sugar supplementation increases the chance of robbing by other colonies, so we decided to supplement our next weakest hive at the same time. So far, so good. All hives are thriving.